The Challenge (Geometry Dash) - Tealy and the Crew

The level had taken Tealy four days to make.

Not four days of careful craft. Not four days of deliberate design philosophy and technical consideration and the kind of quiet focused attention that Beric had brought to Durr Circles over four months. Four days of Tealy sitting at his computer with a specific energy that was somewhere between competitive and unhinged, placing objects with the focused resentment of someone who had watched DumbDird beat Tidal Wave as his third level and had felt something that needed an outlet.

The outlet was 1,630 144Hz cube orb frame perfects.

In a row.

For several minutes.

Nothing else.

---

The decoration was, to call it what it was, bad.

Not interestingly bad. Not bad in a way that suggested a creative decision had been made and had not landed. Bad in the way that a thing made by someone who was thinking entirely about the gameplay and not at all about the aesthetics was bad, which was the purest and most honest kind of bad.

There was a background. It was the default background. It was blue.

There were some blocks. They were the default blocks. They were grey.

At one point, somewhere around the 40% mark, Tealy had apparently made an attempt at decoration, because there was a small cluster of objects that had been placed with what might have been intention, like a single planted flower in an otherwise empty field, before apparently being abandoned as a project when Tealy remembered he did not care about decoration and went back to placing orbs.

Beric looked at the level preview for a long time.

"The decoration," he said.

"I know," said Tealy.

"There's a section around 40%—"

"I know."

"Where it looks like you tried—"

"I know, Beric."

"And then stopped."

"Do you want to talk about the 1,630 frame perfects or do you want to talk about the decoration."

Beric looked at the frame perfects.

Then back at the decoration.

"Both are remarkable," he said, with complete neutrality, "for different reasons."

---

Tealy had sent the level to DumbDird with the message:

"Made you a challenge"

DumbDird: "DURR TALLY!! WHAT IS IT!!"

"1630 frame perfects. Cube orbs. 144Hz. Several minutes long."

A pause that was longer than DumbDird's usual response time.

"DURR TALLY"

"Yeah."

"DURR HOW MANY"

"1630."

"DURR IN A ROW"

"In a row."

"DURR TALLY THAT'S A LOT"

"Yes."

"DURR OKAY I'LL TRY IT"

"I know you will."

---

DumbDird's attempt updates for the challenge had a different quality than his Durr Circles updates.

The Durr Circles updates had been the updates of someone in a long relationship with a difficult thing, someone settling in for a journey with full knowledge it would be a journey. These were different. These were the updates of someone repeatedly walking into a wall and being surprised each time by the wall's continued presence.

Attempt 12: "DURR TALLY THE ORBS ARE REALLY FAST"

Attempt 31: "DURR HOW DID YOU MAKE THESE"

"I just placed 1630 orbs," Tealy replied.

"DURR TALLY THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN FOREVER"

"Four days."

"DURR WHY"

Tealy looked at this message for a moment.

"Unclear," he typed.

Attempt 67: "DURR I GOT 1%"

Attempt 89: "DURR 2%"

Attempt 134: "DURR 3% TALLY"

Tealy sat up.

"3%?"

"DURR YEAH"

"That's actually further than I expected you to get."

"DURR THANKS TALLY"

"It wasn't a compliment."

"DURR I KNOW TALLY BUT 3% IS 3%"

This was true. 3% of 1,630 frame perfects was approximately 49 consecutive frame perfect orb hits at 144Hz. This was, by any reasonable standard, an absurd number of consecutive frame perfect inputs to achieve in a game, and DumbDird had done it in 134 attempts, and had then died, and that was where it had stayed.

3%.

For everyone.

---

Zoink heard about the level through the community, which was where Zoink heard about most things now that Durr Circles and the Geography Dash situation had put DumbDird's general orbit on the radar of people who paid attention to these things.

He tried it on stream.

This was, Tealy reflected watching the clip later, a moment of genuine significance. Zoink, the best player, the man who had beaten Tidal Wave and Durr Circles and described the latter as Tidal Wave difficulty lowkey, sitting down with a level made by Tealy in four days with default decoration and a single abandoned cluster of objects at 40%.

Zoink looked at the preview.

"1,630 orb frame perfects," he read. "144Hz. Made by Tealy."

His chat immediately had opinions.

Zoink started an attempt.

He got to 1%.

He looked at the screen.

Started another attempt.

1%.

Another.

1%.

He leaned back. Tried a few more. Got to 2% on attempt seven, which his chat reacted to, and which Zoink acknowledged with a single nod before trying again.

He spent a couple of minutes on it total. Got to 2% twice. Did not get further.

"Okay," he said, which was the same word he'd used when he first heard the Durr remix, deployed now in a completely different emotional context. "Okay, the decoration is terrible."

His chat agreed about the decoration.

"But the 1,630—" He paused. "That's not a level. That's a statement."

He exited the level.

"Tealy made this," he said to his chat, with an inflection that was not quite admiration and not quite alarm and lived in the specific space between those things. "Tealy, who got past 1% of his own level?"

His chat responded.

Zoink's expression shifted slightly.

"He got less than 1%," Zoink repeated.

His chat confirmed.

Zoink looked at the camera for a moment.

"He built a level he can't beat," Zoink said. "1,630 frame perfects. Default decoration. He got less than 1% of his own creation."

He shook his head once.

"Okay," he said for the third time, and moved on.

---

DumbDird called Tealy after attempt 203, which had also resulted in 3% and nothing beyond 3%.

"DURR TALLY"

"Yeah."

"DURR YOUR LEVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE"

"It's not impossible, you got 3%—"

"DURR TALLY 3% IS BASICALLY 0%"

"It's 3% more than impossible—"

"DURR TALLY." A pause. The pause had weight. "Durr, you're dumb."

Tealy blinked.

"Excuse me."

"DURR, YOU MADE AN IMPOSSIBLE LEVEL, TALLY. DURR, THAT'S DUMB."

"I made a very hard level—"

"DURR TALLY YOU CAN'T EVEN GET 1% OF IT—"

"I was still figuring out the—"

"DURR, YOU BUILT 1,630 FRAME PERFECTS AND THEN COULDN'T DO ONE OF THEM—"

"I did some of them—"

"DURR TALLY LESS THAN 1% IS NOT SOME OF THEM—"

"DumbDird you got 3% and you beat TIDAL WAVE—"

"DURR TALLY THAT'S DIFFERENT TIDAL WAVE HAS VIBES THIS HAS NO VIBES—"

"It has 1,630—"

"DURR TALLY THE DECORATION IS JUST BLUE—"

"The decoration is—" Tealy stopped. "The decoration is fine."

"DURR TALLY THERE'S A LITTLE THING IN THE MIDDLE THAT LOOKS LIKE YOU GAVE UP—"

"That was a stylistic choice—"

"DURR, DUH, TALLY. DUH."

Tealy went very still.

DumbDird had said Duh.

The Duh. The specific Duh that DumbDird deployed exclusively when he was confident he was correct while doing something wrong, except this time he appeared to simply be using it to indicate that Tealy was confidently wrong, which was a new application that somehow felt even more insulting than the original usage.

"Did you just Duh me," Tealy said.

"DURR, DUH, TALLY. THE LEVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE DECORATION IS BAD AND YOU CAN'T BEAT YOUR OWN LEVEL."

A pause.

"DURR, I'M JUST SAYING."

---

Tealy posted in the group chat:

"DumbDird called me dumb"

Dird reacted with 👍

Beric replied: "He's not wrong about the decoration."

Greeny replied: "He's not wrong about the level either. 1,630 consecutive 144Hz frame perfects is statistically nearly impossible to complete cleanly. You've created something that functions more as a theoretical object than a playable level."

Tealy stared at theoretical object.

"I got almost 1%," he typed.

"Almost 1% of 1,630 is approximately 16 frame perfects," Greeny replied. "You built a level and then completed roughly 1% of it."

"Thanks Greeny."

"You're welcome."

Blara posted chips.

Dird reacted with 👍

DumbDird sent, into the group chat, completely unprompted:

"DURR THE DECORATION IS JUST BLUE TALLY"

Followed immediately by an ad for Dumb...Huh?

Tealy closed the app.

Opened it again.

Looked at the level. At the 1,630 orbs. At the default background. At the small cluster of objects at 40% that he had placed with intention and then abandoned.

He opened the level editor.

He was going to fix the decoration.

He spent forty minutes on it.

It was marginally less blue.

The 40% cluster remained.

He published the update and said nothing about it to anyone.

Beric noticed within twenty minutes and sent a single message to the chat:

"He updated the decoration."

Dird reacted with 👍

"It's still pretty bad," Beric added.

"I know," Tealy typed back.

"The 40% thing is still there."

"I KNOW."

DumbDird sent: "DURR TALLY IT LOOKS BETTER!!"

Tealy looked at this message for a long moment.

"Thanks," he typed.

"DURR STILL IMPOSSIBLE THOUGH"

"Yeah."

"DURR, DUH."

Tealy put his phone down.

Got a Banana Nacho gummy.

Sat with the knowledge that he had built a level no one could beat, decorated it in a way that communicated nothing, updated the decoration to communicate marginally more nothing, and had been called dumb by a man who had spelled contestants three different wrong ways and thought Alabama was a reasonable day trip.

And the worst part.

The genuinely worst part.

DumbDird wasn't wrong.

Tealy was not going to say this out loud.

He ate the gummy.

The level remained unbeaten.

It would probably stay that way.

Theoretical object.

He was going to think about that for a while.